With South African blacks freed from apartheid, the nation's new government faces a major challenge in protecting nonblacks from reverse discrimination, says former president F.W. de Klerk.
"How do we manage affirmative action . . . is one of the biggest challenges we face," he said in Washington Tuesday, using the Amer-i-can term for the practice of giving opportunities to those long disadvantaged by discrimination."We dare not fall into a new pattern of institutionalized racial discrimination," said de Klerk, now a deputy vice president of the government of National Unity under President Nelson Mandela, with whom he shared the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end South Africa's apartheid gov-ern-ment.
"What we need to avoid . . . is to say to a young South African, `You cannot compete for this job or that job because you are white or colored or Indian; you need to be black to have any vision of a good career . . . '
"That would be discrimination in the reverse, and we need to strike a balance in assuring upward mobility without being caught up in the trap of a new form of racial discrimination which would fly in the face of our new bill of rights," de Klerk said.
In stressing balance, de Klerk acknowledged that many new opportunities, such as starting small businesses or acquiring land, "will focus on the needs of the disadvantaged, and inasmuch as the disadvantaged are black, they will stand first in the queue to benefit."
He, Mandela and other top leaders of the unity government are committed to the principle that "discrimination on the basis of color - whatever the color involved - is wrong and unconstitutional," de Klerk said.
He spoke and answered questions at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, and later at the South African Business Council.
De Klerk also said foreign investors could be sure of a friendly reception in the new South Africa.
He said all major political parties are committed to freedom of the press, which is protected by the bill of rights and the new constitutional court. "I see that freedom being expanded rather than restricted," he added.